When I think of O.J. Simpson, who died Wednesday, April 10 of prostate cancer at age 76 in Las Vegas, I think of the short story '“Appointment in Samarra,” often retold in novels. The protagonist encounters the figure of Death, and to elude the dreaded specter, runs off to Samarra, only to find Death waiting there at the place where they were destined to meet. You cannot escape fate — or the consequences of your actions, no matter what else you do in life. Such is the Hindu and Buddhist principle of karma.
Read MoreBlog
The Republicans fail to move on
As I returned a purchase in a shopping center on a particularly cold Sunday, an extraordinary thing occurred: A flock of pigeons came running up to me in the parking lot as if it were 1964, I were the Beatles and they were a gaggle of teenage girls. One “fan” even aggressively perched on my car roof.
For a moment I was reminded of Tippi Hedren in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds,” but only for a moment. Extricating myself and securing the car, I returned the merchandise, wandering around the store a bit. Poor things, I thought of the birds. They were probably only looking for some crumbs. But with several eateries in the center, I was sure they wouldn’t go hungry.
When I returned to the parking lot, the birds were gathered around another car and driver, with a lot more of them perched on his roof. (Adulation is so fickle.) That’s when I realized in Sherlock Holmesian fashion that they were not looking just for food. They had figured out that each new car that arrived offered momentary warmth against a cold, mostly open space.
Nature is so smart. Human nature, not so much. Witness, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Exhibit A — the Republican caucuses and primaries.
Read MoreA gaze of their own: women rethinking art history
In the late-20th and early-21st centuries, an age of cultural appropriation that has seen minorities adapt and reinvent the masterpieces of Western civilization, women artists have reasserted the so-called “female gaze,” not only by creating wholly original works but by reclaiming the art historical canon, either interpolating themselves and women arts leaders into iterations of great paintings or imagining men from a woman’s perspective.
A new exhibit at the Lehman College Art Gallery explores this subject through the prism of 19th-century French art.
Read MoreTo live and die in L..A. -- Greta Gerwig's 'Barbie'
“Barbie” — the billion-dollar blockbuster that has fashion and interior designers thinking pink and movie theaters seeing green (as in dollars) — is a rather deceptive movie. It starts out as a kind of beach blanket battle-of-the-sexes rom-com that quickly builds into a poignant dramedy of what it means not to be a woman or a man but human.
Read MoreBlind ambition: The antiheroism of Robert Oppenheimer
Friday, July 21, marks the opening of two highly anticipated movies that have nothing to do with each other but have already been paired in the public consciousness, perhaps because they both ask us to consider what it means to be human in a world where people constantly grapple for power.
The two films — “Oppenheimer” and “Barbie” — have already been conflated as “Barbenheimer” (is that like “Frankenstein”?), with movie buffs planning a five-hour double feature of “Oppenheimer’s” main course and “Barbie’s” dessert. (Well, why not? After all, Barbie and J. Robert Oppenheimer were both physicists.)
I’ll have more on Barbie,“Barbie” and the male gaze in a subsequent post. But for now I’d like to consider Oppenheimer (1904-67), the scientist who spearheaded the creation of the atom bomb and whose life, lived at the nexus of ambition and conscience, would be eclipsed by his failure to understand the power dynamic.
Read More'Vertigo' and the idea of the other
Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 film “Vertigo” has reached what The Washington Post called in its reappraisal ‘Medicare age,’which got me thinking about my favorite movie — one that regularly appears on lists for the greatest, or one of the greatest, films to date. But is it, as The Post suggests, a story for our #MeToo times or rather a more complex tale of the human desire to project onto others our own dreams, fears and desires?
Read MoreKing and Queen to pawn in a game of love and death
We’ve got our teacup all set for the coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla on Saturday, May 6, but what we’ve really been obsessing about is a distant relative of the king’s by way of another Charles — Charles I of England.
He was a direct ancestor of Louis XVI of France, whose marriage to a certain notorious Austrian archduchess is the subject of the revisionist, feminist “Marie Antoinette,” finishing its first season on PBS Sunday, May 7. Quite the royal weekend.
Read More